


A Time Of Confidences

by tielan



Series: Unfinished Symphonies [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28280412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Old friends, making new things.
Relationships: Maria Hill & Steve Rogers
Series: Unfinished Symphonies [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2047115
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	A Time Of Confidences

**Author's Note:**

> Strictly speaking I have the notes for the second half of this (well, I have the notes for every unfinished work I'm posting here) but actually writing it is another matter.

It’s distinctly unnerving to watch yourself walking up the ramp of a spaceship.

Maria allows the weirdness of the Skrull shapeshifter wearing her body to distract her from the fact that Fury’s leaving Earth. At least for a little while.

It’s not that Maria’s dependent on him, just that he’s been a constant in her life for nearly a dozen years, and the realisation that he won’t be a phone call away is daunting.

Nick finishes his conversation with Carol and starts back across the field towards Maria. Behind him, Carol meets Maria’s eyes and gives her a brisk nod. Maria returns a quick salute before she turns her attention to Nick.

It's odd to think of him as 'old' although she supposes he is. His age has always been a fact of his existence, so long as Maria has known him - nothing unusual, just the way things are. And yes, he's had close shaves - being shot up during the business with HYDRA - but...this is different. This isn't something that's happening in the line of duty, a necessary loss in the fight for the world, this is...absence.

"You sure you don't want to come, Hill? They have spare cabins..."

She appreciates the invitation, but...

Something about the Skrulls feels...inhibiting. She's surprised that Fury doesn't feel it - but then, perhaps they don't mind the idea of Fury travelling with them through space.

And, too. the world has taken a hit. The _universe_ has taken a hit and everything is a mess. It would be easy to walk away and leave that mess behind, but that's not the way Maria works. That's not who she is.

"I'll be fine."

"Just so long as you are."

They stares at each other for a long moment, trying to work out how to say goodbye.

They were never personal. Partly because their relationship was anchored in the professional realm, and partly because it's not their way. But in the last few years - since S.H.I.E.L.D came down, since the Avengers stopped needing them - they've become close. 'Friendship' is the wrong word for it, and there's nothing even vaguely romantic between them. It's not really paternal, either: Maria's experience of paternal is long periods of being ignored followed by a stream of verbal and occasionally physical abuse. Which...isn't Nick.

He sighs and puts a hand on her shoulder, gripping it. "Look after yourself, Maria."

"You, too." 

In the end, it's as simple as that. He strides up the ramp without looking back. Maria watches him go. At an unseen signal, it starts to pull up behind him, and the ship begins to lift off.

Maria watches until the ship has made atmosphere - they must have some kind of anti-gravity device, because they move a lot faster than anything that size should - before she turns and goes back to the SUV. It's an hour's drive back to the airfield in rural Italy where she'll pick up the Quinjet and take it back to the Avengers' facility.

After that?

Well, she'll probably wing it.

* * *

Rhodey looks tired when she peers around his office door. He's typing something out on the computer and doesn't stop when she asks, "May I come in?"

He gestures at the seat in front of the table rather than making the joke she expects - about what trouble she brings with her now, or what trouble she's going to fix for him now. Maria sits down and tries to stifle the feeling of being a raw recruit facing a busy superior. She's pretty sure it's not intentional from Rhodey, but she doesn't _know_ anymore.

Thanks to the decision to yank half the universe out of oblivion and just dump them five years in the future, the world is full of trauma.

Some people died in the moments after The Snap. The passengers in the helicopter that Maria watched crash before she herself sifted away actually _died._ Planes that crashed because their pilots turned to dust are gone. Pedestrians crushed beneath vehicles veering out of control and without the medical staff to fix them... The list of dead in the moments after The Snap is huge.

Then, others died in the years afterwards - of starvation, of anger, of grief, of loneliness. They’re gone, and no reversion of the Snapture will bring them back.

And on top of that, those who survived went on with their lives – well, most of them. They mourned their dead, cleaned up the world as best they could. They dated, mated, and moved on.

Those years are still real. The lives that were lived are still real.

Morgan Stark - the reason that Tony wanted to keep the last five years - is very, very real.

But Maria - and all the others who vanished in that moment five years ago - are still who they were back then. Those five years haven't happened for them and never will.

So, yes. The world is full of trauma.

And yes, Maria considers trying to deal with people who she doesn't know anymore as trauma of a kind. So far as she was concerned, she watched herself dissolve on a busy street, then came back a moment later. So far as Rhodey is concerned, she's been dead five years, and he's been running things on a shoestring. Or, more correctly, he and Nat were running things on a shoestring, while the others...did their thing. Steve dabbled in psychotherapy, Thor drank himself into fratdom, Stark played happy families with Pepper, Banner played happy diner chefs with the Hulk, and Clint went rogue.

What do you do when you come back and discover that the world - the people you knew in it - have changed beyond recognition? How do you deal with that?

The psychologists are making a killing - those who can think their way through their own trauma. And that's one thing that Maria's never going to do: let someone else come into her brain and look over her trauma. She's not willing to open herself like that, she can't allow herself to break that way.

Rhodey finishes tapping his way through whatever he's doing, then hits 'send'. "Sorry," he murmurs as he pushes the keyboard away. "Just...stuff. I kind of figured my Air Force days were over when I joined the Avengers - hell, I knew I was never going to get higher than a Bird Colonel when Tony became Iron Man, but this is..."

"They're looking for someone with experience, who lived through the Snap and was involved in world security," Maria finishes for him. "That's you."

"I wish it wasn't. But...there's no point to that." He leans back in his chair. "How're you? I saw the details of Venice that you sent. Pepper's getting Friday to track all the tech that SI developed in the last ten years, but it's a job. Even for an AI. Vision could have done it, but..." He trails off again.

"It's all about the 'but' isn't it?" Maria half-laughs and already knows that she sounds bitter. "We're all halfway to nowhere, trying to work out who we are now that we've either come back to a new world, or regained half the old one that we lived without..."

Rhodey sighs. "We didn't think it through. And now it's all thoroughly fucked up. And you didn't come to see me to talk about this, Maria. What's happened?"

For a moment, she thinks about changing her decision right here and right now - forget what she promised Nick, forget what she knows she's better suited to doing - just try to fit herself back in with the Avengers Initiative again. Never mind that there are hardly any Avengers left...

But she promised Nick, and that promise matters to her.

"Fury's gone. Left Earth," she qualifies when Rhodey's eyes widen. "He hitched a ride with...old friends."

"Old friends like Carol and her Skrulls?"

And this is the part where Maria struggles to keep up. Rhodey knows about the Skrulls because he knows Carol, and somewhere in the last five years, Carol shared how she rediscovered herself to a friend, and... "Yes, Those old friends."

Rhodey nods. "Might be useful to have a few more friends out in the galaxy."

Maria just shrugs. She's...she feels adrift, like she doesn't know what happens next, where to go, what to do. For someone who's never doubted what she's done for a moment, this is a new and uncomfortable feeling.

For the first time in their conversation, Rhodey looks like he doesn't quite know what to say or how to say it. "So...what's your next move?"

"I'm going underground."

"Not literally, I take it?"

"No," she smiles, "not literally. But I won't be available to call upon for a while - and I don't know how long the situation will last."

Rhodey stares at her for a long moment. "You're not going to do anything stupid are you?"

"Define 'stupid'?"

"Well, the thing I'm thinking of is suicide, but...that's not you." He watches her for a moment. "At least, it didn't used to be you."

"Isn't that my line?" Maria arches her brow. "It's still not me."

He exhales in relief. "Good. I've lost enough friends around here; I don't want to lose any more. Will you be contactable?"

"Yes." She gives him the details, and he doesn't write it down, just commits it to memory. Some things are safer unrecorded.

When she gets up to leave, he rises, too. For a moment she thinks he's just going to shake her hand like a polite stranger, but he comes around the desk and they were never tactile - never the type for affection - but he's no longer the Air Force Colonel she knew five years ago. For starters, he's now a one-star General, commensurate with his time in service and experience. And...he's gentler. Less edged, more forgiving.

More affectionate, apparently, because he kisses her on the cheek, briefly pressing his jaw against hers. It takes Maria a moment to soften. She's not used to this kind of contact and...its a little strange...but also kind of...nice. And in her mind, his words echo, _I've lost enough friends around here_.

It warms her that she's still counted a friend - maybe it's only in the 'someone that he used to know' category, but that's still in the friends column, even if they're not close anymore. She looks at him and briefly wishes she had more time to get to know this friend five years older. But duty calls - it always does.

"Look after yourself, okay, Maria?"

And that's the old Rhodey. "I will if you do."

* * *

For a miracle, the building is still maintained.

Not all of them are - a reduction in resources also meant a reduction in what services could be offered. A lot of buildings have fallen into disrepair, the ones that were looked after had enough tenants to maintain them. At least, that's how it mostly worked in American cities. Other countries struggled along or fell apart, but America had the population, the money, and the infrastructure to eke out an existence, even if it wasn't the comfortable one that they'd grown up with.

The foyer of this building is clean, no leaves or dirt in the corners. The stairwell has been recently painted, and the old wooden banister is polished and oiled. Voices murmur behind the doors that she passes as she climbs the stairs up to the third floor, people living here - families, doubtless both those linked by biology and those that the survivors 'made' in the wake of the dissolution of half the universe.

She pauses outside the door, caught in the sudden realisation that someone else might have moved into the apartment in the years between. With no apparent owner, and enough people left to maintain the building and look out for each other, the occupancy rate here would surely be high.

Fitting her key into the lock, she starts to turn it, and has the door yanked out of her hand.

She steps back, reaching for her weapon as he fills the doorway. Big and broad and a stranger--

"Maria?"

It takes her a moment. Not until the mouth quirks in the softly deprecating smile does recognition dawn.

"Steve? What are you doing here?"

He takes a moment to answer, looking at her like he hasn't seen her in years - which he hasn't. She wasn't there when he went to return the infinity stones. He wasn't there when she came back to the Avengers facility. So this is the first time they've seen each other since Tony's funeral - the first time she's seen him since he got old.

And for him it would be the first time in...what? Fifty years? More?

"I...live here..."

"You live--? But this is my grandparents' place."

Maria's gaze drifts past him into the apartment, and she abruptly realises that the simple, barely-furnished apartment she left behind has changed beyond recognition.

Pushing past him, she steps into an entirely new apartment - redecorated, redone. Beneath her feet are polished floorboards instead of the hard-worn carpet, and they extend into the kitchen, which was once tattered lino. The walls have been painted a fresh white, there's a rug on the floor and bookshelves up - real wooden shelves, not just the cheap chipboard type.

The only thing she recognises is the couch, a solid leather thing that her grandfather bought the year before he died - the year before the Avengers first assembled in New York. But what was brand new then is ten years worn now.

Still in good condition, though.

It's almost homey. Except it's not Maria's home - not anymore.

Steve closes the door gently behind her. "When we were trying to rebuild, during the loss, I was looking for somewhere to live. You were gone, but you'd mentioned your grandparents' place in New York... And I...I think I thought...better a friend than a stranger..."

Maria surveys the apartment. "You did all this?"

"Me and others. Repairs were kind of an all-building effort - a lot of people helping fix what needed fixing." He glances up at the ceiling, his gaze sliding across the space as though he's reliving the memories in here. Maybe he is. "I'm sorry-- When I came back, it didn't occur to me that your-- That this isn't mine anymore."

It's understandable. Maria comprehends the logic of it perfectly. That doesn't mean she's particularly happy to discover that this space - what she thought was her refuge from work and world security and everything going on in and around it - has been taken over by someone else. Even when that someone else is Steve Rogers. Twice.

But she's tired and she doesn't have anywhere else to go right now, so she's going to make the best of it and deal with everything in the morning. Or whenever she next wakes up.

"Is there a spare bedroom?"

"Yes. But I can make the master bed up for you."

"No, it's fine--"

"It's not." His words are sharp and a little flat. "I'm in your space."

Maria gives the area around them a pointed look. "It's not my space anymore."

"Well, it's not mine either," he says. "And I've been away from here for a lot longer than you have. Don't argue, Maria. Just say 'thank you'."

She takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Okay. Thank you, Rogers."

"Steve," he says as he goes into the kitchen. "You used to call me Steve."

"You _were_ Steve, then," she points out and watches him pause as he reaches for a clean mug.

"What am I now?"

Whimsy strikes her with black humor. "Mister Rogers?"

He turns with the mug in hand and puts it under the spout of the fancy coffee machine. "You always--" He cuts himself off. "Coffee?"

"Not now, thanks," she says then prompts, " _I always..._?"

He rests his hands on the bench, staring at the mug before his gaze flicks up to hers. "You always surprise me."

She laughs a little. "Did I?"

"Yeah." He half-smiles and Maria thinks that there's a ruefulness in his expression before he stands up. "There are go-to meals in the freezer if you want something to eat. I'll go make that bed."

Maria watches him go, a little confused by the choppiness of the conversation, but not up to thinking about it. Instead, she opens the fridge to look at the contents - a lot of fresh food and tupperware containers - and then the freezer to peer at the carefully-labelled containers and pull them out.

She's not really hungry, though, just a little peckish. And the apples on the benchtop fruit basket are looking really good--

They _taste_ really good.

Not just sweet, but...she can't describe it. Flavoursome. Tart and tangy and--

"Where'd you get the apples from?"

"Uh...they arrived in a fruit box delivery," he calls back from the bedroom. "If I recall correctly, it was a service that started during the lost years, and I didn't cancel it before I left."

His voice is a little muffled, and she wanders down the corridor to see what he's doing. In fact, he is literally changing the bedsheets: tucking corners, folding edges, throwing a blanket out...

Maria leans a shoulder against the wall and reflects that for a guy with the physique of a seventy year old, he's moving pretty spry, bending and turning without so much as a creak. Whatever the life he lived after he returned the stones, he both lived it well and lived it healthy.

"Would it help if I wiggled my butt?"

She's startled into laughter by the unexpected comment - made as he leans over to tuck the near-side edge of the sheet under the mattress. "It's a pretty nice butt."

"Y...Yeah. It is." He pauses for a moment. "My wife says that - said that - often."

"A wise woman," Maria says lightly to leaven the hint of loss in his voice.

Sam already noted that Steve was wearing a ring but avoiding questions. _Would have figured that, what, how long ago did Peggy Carter die? Seven years? That's a decent amount of time._

In the face of fifty years together, though, Maria figures that's nothing. Although she thinks it makes it a little awkward that he's both flirting with her now _and_ referencing his wife's admiration of his butt while making her bed in her bedroom. Although technically, it's his bedroom - or it was for the last five years while he lived here and--

And she's really tired if this is the tack her brain is taking right now.

She goes back out to get the duffle she dumped in the hallway and to dispose of the apple core. Steve comes out with his arms full of sheets. "I...uh...I put your mom's quilt back on the bed."

Maria blinks. "My mom's-- Oh, _no_."

Her mom was a Captain America fangirl growing up - collected the comics, bought the paraphernalia, and made a patchwork quilt. She left it behind at her parents' place when she left for college, and never retrieved it. After her death giving birth to Maria, Maria's grandmother kept the quilt, thinking Maria might like it when she got older. It was never a question of liking or not liking it for Maria. It was one of the few things Maria had from her mom; the fact that it was a Captain America quilt was beside the point - even after she started working at SHIELD and with the Avengers.

Only now Steve Rogers has seen it. Probably slept under it. Definitely grinned over it.

"Stop smirking," she tells Steve as she passes him on her way to the bedroom.

"Sorry," he says behind her, and she can tell he's not.

* * *

Maria's original plan for coming to the safehouse was to take stock of what she had, of what Fury has left her, of the things that need watching now that everything's changed.

Without S.H.I.E.L.D, without the three mainstays of the original Avengers, without Nick Fury, world security is in something of a bind. Yes, Rhodey is working on the Avengers Initiative. Yes, Sam has Steve's shield and it looks like he and Barnes are going to be working - together with Wakandan security - to keep things on course. Yes, they have friends out in the universe - Thor, Carol Danvers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Skrulls. None of that changes the need for someone to keep a quiet and underhand eye on the spotfires with the aim of putting them out if they need it, and calling for backup when otherwise indicated. And Maria is fairly sure they'll need it.

Steve's presence puts the plan to do planning into a tailspin.

Starting from when Maria wakes up to the smell of food cooking, coffee brewing, and someone humming to themselves in the apartment.

She could go out and demand to know what he's doing, but it's too early, she's not fully awake just yet, and she doesn't want a confrontation to start the day. So instead, she climbs into the shower and lets the hot water wake her up while she washes her hair. The sonic shampoo thing that the Skrulls had on their ship might have gotten her hair clean, but the sensory experience wasn't a patch on standing in the shower with her head under the spray.

When she finally emerges from the shower, she expects that he'll be done in the kitchen, but he's still there at the stove, frying something in a pan. There's a mug of coffee on the bench, pushed across so it's in front of the seat, and it's still steaming.

"You still take your coffee black right now, don't you?" he says without turning around.

Maria sits down at the bench and peers into the mug. Black and strong, just the way she likes it. "How else is there to take it?"

He half-turns and his mouth curves up a little at the corners. "What are your plans for today?"

"What's that to you?"

"Curiosity," he says. "And we might need to have a discussion about world security."

"Why?"

He doesn't answer as he picks up the pan and slides the bacon onto plates, then sets the pan down, turns off the stove, and places one plate in front of Maria. "Because you're not going to do it alone."

"Of course not. Fury had agents all over the--" Maria pauses as she realised it wasn't a question. "You're retired."

"From saving the world." His chin is still as stubborn as ever, even if the smile that tilts his mouth shows a more droll sense of humour than she recalls. "I'm thinking of taking a step sideways in my career prospects."

"God help world security," she mutters to herself as she looks down at the plate. Bacon and eggs and a few other things, plated up like he's a professional chef. "What is this?"

"Eggs, easy over, with crispy bacon, sourdough toast and wilted spinach."

Maria spears a lump of something white on her fork and lifts it to eye level with a raised brow.

"Feta cheese," he tells her.

"Did you open a restaurant or something?"

"I worked in a kitchen for a while." He flips the teatowel over his shoulder. "Try it five times before you reject it out of hand."

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, Dad."

Steve winces a little as he turns back to the stove and starts putting the pan and utensils into the dishwasher. "Look, I'm just letting you know that you have other resources. If you want them."

"Are you that bored that you're coming to me for a job?"

"Are you that stubborn that you're going to refuse help out of hand?"

"No. I'm just..." Maria sighs. "I don't know why you're doing this, Steve. You should be...I don't know...retired. Dandling grandkids on your knee - or great-grandkids by now."

"I'm still retired," he says, a little stiffly. "And my kids and grandkids have no illusions as to who and what I am. But...you could use a consultant."

And he's offering to help.

Maria lets the thought sit there as she works her way through breakfast. She _was_ wondering just exactly how she was going to manage running world security on her own, wasn't she? And this is the answer, fallen right into her lap. Or, at least, her apartment. But she distrusts it, because nothing falls into her lap, and gift horses tend to come with unpleasant surprises.

On the other hand, it's a really good breakfast. It certainly beats the toast she was planning to have, even if it's a little weird to have an elderly Steve cooking her breakfast, moving through her apartment like he owns it.

Which, she supposes, he did for the better part of five years. Even if it was fifty or sixty or seventy years ago...

She finishes the breakfast and he replaces her coffee without a word, sliding her plate out from under her and putting it away. He's very efficient.

"Are you buttering me up?"

He grins at her and in spite of the fact that he's got to be at least eighty or ninety years old, the smile can still make her heart skip a beat. "Is it working?"

As Maria waits to answer, she makes a mental note that elderly Steve Rogers is dangerous in a way his younger version didn't quite manage. He's learned how to use charm to get his way, and has no compunction about using it.

 _If he ever learns to wield that smile like a weapon, women will be in trouble,_ Nat murmured back in the early days when they were training him.

 _There aren't already?_ Maria retorted, indicating the viewing windows which were crowded with Triskelion workers - most of them female.

Maria feels a sudden pang and wishes that Nat was here. She could use Nat's pragmatism here and now, a complement to her own.

 _Silly,_ she can almost hear the voice, coolly amused. _You've got Steve Rogers on your side, don't you?_

Maria isn't convinced.

"All right," she tells him. "How do you see this arrangement working, then? Are you going to decide what you're going to work on, go off on your own crusade, choose your own targets to investigate?"

He huffs a little as he leans back against the pantry cupboard. "I know how to take orders, Maria."

"But you don't always follow them."

"I'll follow them from you."

"Except where you won't."

He opens his mouth, pauses, then shakes his head. "Was I really that bad when I was younger?" One hand rises to halt any answer she might make. "Don't answer that, Maria. Look, this isn't the Avengers anymore, and it's never going to be. I'm not the man you knew then either - I've been through a lot in that time and..."

"And?"

He quirks a smile. "Let's just say I've learned a lot about the value of choosing when to stand firm and when to give way."

She sips her coffee while he watches her. There's no judgement in his expression, just the sense of endless patience, like she can take the time to make her decision - he's got all the time in the world.

Maria doesn't want to. She liked Steve, considered him a friend, but he was always trouble one way or the other. It didn't help that she always felt awkwardly exposed around him - like he was seeing right through her sharp cynicism. And, yes, there was the issue of a ridiculously attractive, good, single man who treated her like her opinions were valuable when she was accustomed to being dismissed out of hand. Never mind that he did that with nearly everyone. Maria might not have ever said or done anything beyond the boundaries of professionalism and friendship, but she was susceptible all the same and she'd disliked the sensation enough to resent him for it.

_The party had quietened, with people heading home or being escorted to the guest rooms to 'sleep it off'. And with the large space no longer packed full of bodies, the evening was a lot more chilly._

_Maria was just contemplating going upstairs to get a shawl when Steve joined her looking out across the city. "You're shivering."_

_"It's the air-conditioning turned up for the party, I don't know why JARVIS hasn't turned it down--"_

_"Here," he settled the jacket around her shoulders. "Wear this. You're giving me goosebumps."_

_It was still warm from his body and smelled of him. Maybe it was the scent that shortwired her brain and liquified her insides; Maria fought the urge to sink into it and wrap her arms around herself._

_"I can't wear your jacket-- "_

_"It's only the team now," he said bluntly. "You don't need to worry they'd think anything's happening between us."_

The issue was never what other people thought, just what she had to live with.

But Maria knows she's not going to be able to do world security by herself. Even before Thanos consigned half the universe into oblivion, it had been both her and Nick working together - and dropping hints to Natasha or Rhodey along the way, depending on which group would be more useful in dealing with the issue.

Without Natasha, perhaps the universe is compensating her for Nick's departure by handing her Steve instead?

Hah. If only that was the way the universe worked!

"All right," she tells him. "You're hired. Only I don't have a budget, or a headquarters, or even any idea of which resources are still available to me, so...I hope you work for peanuts."

He grins then, and Maria feels a lurch in her stomach. _Uh oh._

"I may have a _little_ bit more than peanuts."


End file.
